North Texas Teen Book Festival -- be yourself!

 Teen readers -- and some parents, teachers, maybe even kid brothers and sisters -- packed the Irving Convention Center this month for the annual North Texas Teen Book Festival. With more than 40 panels, speakers, and events packed into a single day, it's hard to pick even highlights.

But for those wondering what tales are suitable for teen readers, the answer is almost anything: a spot of mayhem, the darkness of family violence, love-sweet-love, and especially diversity.

Even the staple of fairy tales drew a huge audience of young readers. But these weren't your grandma's tales. They drew from the "Frozen" canon (yes, Disney is still a fave), pop culture remixes, rediscovered tales from a variety of cultures, even tales in which bad guys could take center stage.

"I find villains fascinating," said James Riley, author of The Story Thieves series. "A hero would give up love to save the world. A villain would give up the world to save his love."

(At least, for awhile. . .)

Taking risks with darkness also played out on the panel "Sidelined: Play by your own rules," with among others, panelist Torrey Maldonado, the author of books dealing with broken families, domestic violence, and "how absolute power can corrupt."

"As a teacher for 30 years, toxicity is something I've witnessed and experienced," he said. 

And if this sound too heavy for his middle-grade readers (his books are under 200 words), they've received such real-life accolades from teachers in the trenches of teen life.

It was the same kind of "be yourself, take risks," advocated by author Stacey Lee on the fairy story panel. "I didn't see any books with Asian people in them, so I did a lot of repression (as a teen)." That is, until she had kids and her inner writer demanded books about kids who looked like them. Now she's the author of Reese's YA Book Club pick, The Downstairs Girls, among other books for teen readers.

And on the "looking like me" issue, what if kids are half and half, like the heroine of The Other Half of Happy, by Rebecca Balcárcel, getting flack from both ethnic sides of your family?

Seeing ourselves in story characters isn't only a matter of race, ethnicity, or gender. Neurodiversity got its due as well. Panelist Alyson Gerber told its story in Focus, the tale of a chess champion struggling with her mental spirals. The techniques in the book include those used by Gerber herself, who lives with ADHD.

But if young readers don't shy from the darker side of life, they also long for stories about love. Like those from Elise Bryant, who proclaimed herself a believer in instant love. 

Not incidentally, she's the author of romantic comedies Happily Ever Afters, and others, who said she knew by age 19 who she wanted to marry and made him "pinky-swear" to do so. (Amazingly, despite that he was still willing to ask her out.)

The filled auditorium who greeted the romance writers with applause seconded Bryant's words.

Panelists ranged from lifelong "Jane Austen nerds" like Sayantani DasGupta who still missed seeing characters who looked like her in romance, to J. C. Peterson who "envied the banter," to Bryant, who dubbed herself "the bad girl here" for never having read Austen.

The Bridgerton TV series also received shout-outs for its combination of racial diversity, Regency style romance, and gorgeous clothes.

North Texas Teen Book Fest

Then there was Julian Winters, whose opening statement, "I mostly write queer contemporary fiction. Queer teens fall on their face and fall in love," drew wild applause from the audience.

Love and laughter were in the air, even among the panelists. 

But given that they're writing for young audiences, how far can the romance really go, moderator Gabi Sikes asked. "What's the most challenging part of writing characters falling in love?"

The hardest part, Peterson said, was "showing real flaws. Letting them see the flaws in characters and saying, yet, I still want to be with this person."

Winters said, "I don't want to give young readers false hope," noting that for queer people, finding suitable romantic partners can be tough. But the hardest part of writing romance for teens? "It's the kiss."

(He admitted to keeping a folder of kissing scenes, perhaps for inspiration.)

"The kissing scenes were so difficult," DasGupta agreed, admitting she turned to her own teen kids for help. Their answer, "Where are the kissing scenes, Mom? More kissing!"

***

Next: What's up with banned books?

Last look at teen book fest – heroes for our age

 After hearing authors speak, what can we do except – read their books! Part of the fun of the annual North Texas Teen Book Festival is perusing the tables of books from authors new to me. But books were still on view at this year’s virtual fest, so I grabbed a handful from authors I’d just heard speak. Particularly tempting were B. B. Alston’s head-spinning twist on middle-grade academia fantasy and a nonfiction volume from Texas author Christina Soontornvat.

***

Review of: All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team

Author: Christina Soontornvat

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Rating: five stars

All Thirteen

All Thirteen’s Newbery Honor Book status pegs it as a “middle-grade” book aimed at readers in grades 3-7. But just as Christina Soontornvat is a stickler for never writing down to young readers, her writing is also compelling to those beyond middle school – even to adults. The rescue of 12 young boys and their coach from a flooded cave system in Thailand in 2018 was world-wide news. But ephemeral news articles can’t replace detailed investigative reporting. News sources at the time tended to focus on the rescue divers – including the tragic death of a retired Thai Navy Seal – while slighting the immense cast of background players. And no doubt due to privacy concerns, details about the boys themselves were skimped.

Soontornvat was able to interview some of the chief dive consultants as well as, thanks to her family connections who served as interpreters, numerous Thai players in the drama – from the boys themselves (who she later met) to the teams who pumped water out of the cave to increase divers’ accessibility, to those who provided meals and support services during the ordeal.

All Thirteen opens with a typical Saturday for the Wild Boars soccer team, whose members ranged in age from 11 to 16, and their completely typical post-practice excursion to a famous local cave on June 23, 2018. Although the official monsoon season had begun, the heaviest rains were not expected for a few more weeks as the boys and their young coach entered Tham Luang Nang Non – the Cave of the Sleeping Lady. They had no way to know that those blinding rains were about to arrive that very day.

Late that night, the director of a local rescue organization received a call that the boys were missing, and that their families suspected they had become trapped in the cave.

It would be 10 days before anyone has certain knowledge of the boys’ whereabouts. Ten days of not knowing if they were still alive. And of wondering how to bring them out before the cave flooded still more deeply.

Readers can tear through the action-packed and emotional story of the rescue itself, but alongside the narrative, All Thirteen includes numerous side bar articles on everything from Thai culture to the nature of the cave system to diving equipment, pictures of the process and the people who made it happen, the aftermath and the experience’s effect on the boys, and sources for additional reading. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

***

Review of:  Amari and the Night Brothers

Author: B. B. Alston

Publisher: Balzar + Bray

Rating: four stars 

Readers who think they’ve seen every possible take on the subject of youngsters in a school for magic will be surprised and delighted by B.B. Alston’s debut novel, Amari and the Night Brothers. With a determined young protagonist from the wrong side of the tracks in a school where magic is off-limits for its supernaturally talented students, anything becomes possible. After all, what curious youngster ever declined to do something just because it was forbidden?

Especially not Amari, who will dare anything to find her adored older brother Quinton. Once the star investigator of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, Quinton hasn’t been heard from since he went missing while on a dangerous assignment. Not heard of that is, until Amari receives surprise delivery of a message from her brother, along with nomination to the summer camp for junior investigators where he was once a star pupil.

Amari’s just been expelled from her own (non-supernatural) school for pushing back against fellow students who sneered at her as a “charity case.” She even dares to don the hideous suit the nomination mandated her to wear to her interview for Quinton’s former academy. And gaining admittance to her brother’s workplace at the Bureau (“the link between the known world and what is hidden”) seems the best place to begin looking for Quinton himself.

Little does she know the Bureau and its summer camp entry point are riven by the same prejudices, backbiting and jealousy she hoped to leave behind. Oh, and the kind of treachery that could cost Amari her life – and the life of the brother she adores.

***

My sole quibble with Amari and the Night Brothers is Amari’s age. At one point, she is specifically stated to be twelve, which seems at least a couple of years too young for the friendship inching toward romance she experiences in the course of the book. Not to mention really, really young for adults to trust her with dispatching the worst supernatural criminal of all. I understand the age limit was intended to keep the story within the “middle-grade” bounds of books for elementary school-aged readers.

When protagonists reach their teens, their exploits supposedly leap into the range of “young adult” books. Or so we’ve long been told. However, at the North Texas Teen Book Festival, author Ally Carter (Winterborne Home series) noted that her 15-year-old character was now deemed too young for YA with its expected readership between 12-16 years because readers typically are drawn to protagonists slightly older than themselves. So, if a protagonist between the ages of 13 and 15 is too young for YA, why can’t she still be young enough for middle-grade? 

Short takes from NTTBF: how do you write?

 Happy day! My book shipment from this month’s North Texas Teen Book Festival just arrived, including several from members of the festival’s Fantastical Tales panel, where B. B. Alston, Prince Joel Makonnen, Kwame Mbalia, Lisa McMann, and Shannon Messenger answered questions about every aspect of their writing lives. Including (for Messenger) “Is it true you still sleep with a stuffed animal?” panel moderator Kristen Dickson asked.

Messenger, author of the Keepers of the Lost Cities series, has no bones about admitting her devotion to an adorable stuffed toy which was the basis for one of her characters. “How do you sleep without a stuffed animal,” she asked. “I don’t know what to do with my arms!”

Fantastical Tales panel, NTTBF

Mbalia admitted to a less charming animal episode – falling through mats of swamp vegetation, then walking home through a forest crawling with copperhead (snakes). “That’s when I decided the outdoors was not for me!” (Luckily, he went on to become the New York Times best-selling author of the Tristan Strong series, which requires relatively little contact with venomous animals in the flesh.)

And Prince Joel Makonnen (pronounced “Yoel”)? Yes, he really is a prince. “People ask if ‘prince’ is my first name or just a cool title I like to use.” The truth is, neither of the above. He really is a member of the royal family of Ethiopia! But when he’s not running a real-life media empire, he collaborates with Mbalia on the middle-grade fantasy, Last Gate of the Emperor, due out May 4.

OK, so we had a panel of multiply published authors. Surely, their peers recognized them early on for their genius, yes? Well, not actually.  

B.B. Alston took his debut novel, Amari and the Night Brothers, to his writing group, “and they said, ‘you’re not going to sell a kid’s fantasy with a Black main character!’” (Luckily, his agent disagreed!)

Still, there must be some deep, dark secret to success. Maybe their early reading experience? (Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, mainly, Mbalia says, but also notes “an author I probably wasn’t supposed to read – Walter Mosley and his Devil in a Blue Dress, or basically anything in Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series.)

Or maybe the secret is their play lists?

“Panda cams!” is the favorite of McMann, another one of those NYT-bestsellers, with so many series to her credit she had to count them on her fingers to be sure. (Unwanteds series, Unwanteds Quests, Vision Trilogy, Going Wild series, Wake Trilogy, plus assorted stand alones.)

Messenger prefers Ambient Sounds (various versions available, including from YouTube). Prince Joel prefers Café Jazz on YouTube but also likes – just plain silence.

And Alston? His reply makes him an author after my own heart: “I have to have noise-cancelling headphones – complete silence at all times!”

***

Still to come – that secret, never before disclosed, begging to be exploited age gap in YA fiction I mentioned in a previous post? Stay tuned!

Short takes from NTTBF: how to write jokes

 I admit – I can’t think of anything harder to write than humor. But between the COVID-19 pandemic, economic catastrophes, and – in my part of the world – an apocalyptic power outage – I was desperately in need of a dose of good cheer.

The title of a session at the recent North Texas Teen Book Festival was “Jeff Kinney on writing jokes.” The Jeff Kinney, whose Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series could brighten even the gruesomeness of adolescence? I added it to my “must-see” list. And that was before learning it included junk food. (Double-stuffed Oreo cookies are among his inspirations.)

Asked how he writes stories, Kinney said, “I always start with the jokes,” but how he comes up with those has changed over time.

Jeff Kinney 

He originally started, as writers often do, with what he knew – collecting all the funny things he could remember from his own life. That aspect alone spanned nearly four years. But the series grew. And grew. And then the hard part came – creating new jokes.

He tried all the usual methods for juicing creativity: taking walks, mowing the lawn, (probably) devouring junk food. This actually got him through nearly a dozen books. Then he found a method. (Were Oreos still involved? Inquiring minds want to know.)

The method was called systematic creative thinking, a methodology originally designed for engineering problems, which can only show how truly desperate Kinney’s search for humor had become.

You can look it up. Or you can use the three-part cheat sheet Kinney devised:

1.     Take something and count its individual parts

2.     Take those parts and add, subtract, or divide them

3.     Ask whether the result is something is a product somebody could actually use

Here’s Kinney’s simplified illustration. Take a pair of eyeglasses, which have only two basic parts: lenses and frames. Consider taking away the lenses and ask, could anybody use a pair of eyeglass frames on their own?

Surprisingly, the answer is, yes. “How about celebrities who want to look intellectual for a camera shoot but don’t want those distracting reflections?”

Even easier, consider removing the frames from your eyeglasses. Shrink the resulting lenses down and you have contact lenses.

Useful, but not particularly funny. (Except in the case of the vain would-be intellectual.) But for a Wimpy Kid book, consider starting with a kid on an airplane and listing all the parts on that plane (“including the barf bags,” Kinney noted because, hey, he’s Kinney).

Then, think about what can be subtracted. How about the pilot? To most of us, a pilot-less plan would be the stuff of nightmares. Luckily for anyone with a fear of flying, in Kinney’s case, it became the basis for a joke in his 12^th book, The Getaway. From then on, systematic process became Kinney’s joke-generating mechanism of choice, the superpower that enables him to write two books yearly.

It’s not his only superpower, of course. There’s also his now-revealed secret COVID-era writing place – the local cemetery (nice and quiet!). And snacks. Plenty of snacks. Because writers got to keep their strength up! 

***

Still to come from the North Texas Teen Book Festival – what do fantasy writers sleep with (please, the PG version!), what’s great about reading things too old for you, the secret age gap of YA heroes, and more!

2020 countdown – readers’ favorite posts, day 5

 Tales from the North Texas Teen Book Festival always figure among reader favorites. The 2020 festival in early March finished just before the country shut down for COVID-19, but 2021 is, as of this writing, good to go! In the meantime, please enjoy these highlights: 

Tales from teen book fest – our safe place in stories 

First of all – is it possible to talk about “safe places” amid thousands of teens and preteens turned loose at a book festival? Aside from the abundance of hand sanitizer stations at last weekend’s North Texas Teen Book Festival in Irving, Texas, there was little evidence of worry about the COV-19 epidemic that occupies older minds. Worry about getting to the head of the line for favorite author signings, yes. And about grabbing snacks and restroom breaks between the dozens of panels and publisher events. Epidemics barely rated a yawn.           

Image: Pixabay

What really scared young readers was finding a place to fit in. Especially if they were (or felt) a little different from the characters in the books they read. Luckily for them, authors of, and writing about, diverse ethnicities, cultures, and body and genre types abounded. Like Roshani (“the ‘a’ is silent!”) Chokshi (Gilded Wolves series), Melissa de la Cruz (Descendants series), Hafsah Faizal (We Hunt the Flame series), Marie Lu (The Kingdom of Back), and Marissa Meyer (The Lunar Chronicles series) at the Flights of Fantasy panel discussion. 

“How can stories be used as a safe place?” moderator/podcaster (Adventures in YA) Sara Roberts asked the group, whose ethnic diversity – Indian American, Hispanic, Chinese, multi-racial, and Arab, as well as identifying as white – offered a springboard for discussion. 

“(Fantasies are) are safe places in that they do not minimize any emotion. That’s what I love about children’s literature,” Chokshi said. 

That’s because readers can explore “while immersing yourselves in a whole new world,” Cruz said. “A lot of fantasy is metaphor.” 

Lu noted, “The journey of discovery of yourself always applies. (But) there were a lot of holes in fantasy that are now opening up and giving way to other voices.” 

For Meyer, reading fantasy as a young person was escapist, a way to explore new worlds. “there’s so much explanation mirrored in these epic quests.” 

Given the benefits of trying on these new worlds, “How important is it for young readers to see themselves” in books, Roberts asked. 

As an Indian American, Chokshi said, even after she began writing as well as reading, “I took me a while to realize I was writing myself out of my stories. These stories read with a lot more urgency when you see yourself in them.” 

“Maybe the beautiful queen can have dark hair instead of blonde,” Cruz said. 

“My first efforts were very white,” Faizal said. “I wrote all white characters because I thought that’s what I had to do to get published. . . (Once) I realized what was wrong and got myself into the story, it took off.” 

“Early on,” Lu also admitted, “I never ever thought of putting myself in these books. Growing up, I never saw a story with a Chinese character. I can’t imagine what it would have meant to me as a reader.” 

Surveying her fellow writers, Meyer decided to address the elephant in the room. “So, I’m white,” she said, a statement that drew delighted laughter from her very diverse audience. “I came to this through anime and realized that even in anime, which is Japanese, a lot of the characters are white,” sparking the possibility of diverse characters in even the smallest details. 

And although many stories emphasize the difficulties faced by characters (and readers and writers) of non-white ethnicities, “It’s really great to have stories about ourselves that are fun!” Chokshi said.

***

And here are the fest's followup posts: 

Diversity goes to the big (and biggish) screens 

Stories for (but not limited to) young adult readers have long been fodder for movie and TV adaptations. Nothing against Little Women, but the recent North Texas Teen Book Festival hosted a range of more recent – and sometimes harder-edged – books taking their places on the big – and small – screens. 

Panelists Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda), Max Brallier (Last Kids on Earth TV series), David Levithan (Every Day), Sarah Mlynoski (Upside Down Magic), Julie Murphy (Dumplin’), and Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give) joined moderator/podcaster Sara Roberts to talk about what it’s like to see their books come to life in a different medium – and whether they’ve brought new readers with them. 

Responses ranged from Mlynoski (whose movie adaption is due this summer): “I don’t know yet but I learn people get a lot more into it.” 

To Albertalli: “I’m not sure people knew it was a book,” of the Love, Simon, movie adaptation of her coming of age story, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. (Which didn’t keep festival teens from finding, and sporting copies of the original.) 

To Murphy: “People tell me, ‘my dad’s seen your movie.’” (Dumplin’, based on the book of the same name). “Dad may not have turned into a reader,” Murphy said, “but I’m glad he’s getting the story.” 

However, writers acknowledged that Hollywood can be slower to pounce on themes of diversity than publishers. Having movies about “a black girl (Thomas’s The Hate U Give), a gay boy (Love, Simon), and a fat girl (Dumplin’)” as Thomas noted, necessarily mean more traction for characters whose diversity mirrors that of increasing numbers of young readers. 

“You have to ask the film people to make sure the world (on film) around your characters is just as diverse,” Murphy said. 

When the session turned to Q&A, one young fan said, “I write, but about serious things and the problems of the world. But when I tell people, they say, you’re a kid, you should be writing about happy things, like ponies. What do you say to that?” 

Authors bluntly favored the questioner, although not all responses were suitable for print. “I look forward to you signing a book for me one day.” 

***

 Rick Riordan as patron saint of mythic adaptations 

It’s no secret that adaptations of classical myths are hot properties in literature for kids and teens. Middle-grade author Rick Riordan first primed the pump with his wildly irreverent takes on Greek divinities, but his Rick Riordan Presents imprint within Disney Publishing has expanded to feature a multitude of other cultural myths adapted to modern life. 

The Rick Riordan Presents! panel at the North Texas Teen Book Festival drew on books by Indian American writer Roshani Chokshi (Gilded Wolves series), Cuban Carlos Hernandez (Sal and Gabi Break the Universe) and African Kwame Mbalia (Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky). 

Rebecca Marsick opened the discussion with the observation, “All of your books involve other dimensions.” 

“Every book is a thought experiment – what if this happens?” Hernandez said. The alternate dimension is this other possibility.” 

“Portal fantasy and alternate dimensions are just cool ways to explain magic,” Mbalia said. “Things just are, and you’re free to explore the stories. We don’t have a lot of time to explain in books. We have to get to the meat.” 

What, Marsick asked, did the writers’ personal cultures bring to their stories? 

Or perhaps, Hernandez said, it was a matter of what they didn’t bring – the blanks he felt necessary to fill in. “One of the things I wasn’t seeing in the (Latinx) literature was the joy. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t happy. Things feel wild and magical all the time, even when we struggle.” 

Chokshi also noted that a writer’s experience with myths may vary, citing differences between the stories she and her husband, from another part of the country, learned. “India is a big place (and) I’m not trying to represent an entire country in a book. What we have to do is celebrate these stories. Try to get the general strokes of the mythology and then let it live.”

Tales from teen book fest – our safe place in stories

First of all – is it possible to talk about “safe places” amid thousands of teens and preteens turned loose at a book festival? Aside from the abundance of hand sanitizer stations at last weekend’s North Texas Teen Book Festival in Irving, Texas, there was little evidence of worry about the COV-19 epidemic that occupies older minds. Worry about getting to the head of the line for favorite author signings, yes. And about grabbing snacks and restroom breaks between the dozens of panels and publisher events. Epidemics barely rated a yawn.            

What really scared young readers was finding a place to fit in. Especially if they were (or felt) a little different from the characters in the books they read. Luckily for them, authors of, and writing about, diverse ethnicities, cultures, and body and genre types abounded. Like Roshani (“the ‘a’ is silent!”) Chokshi (Gilded Wolves series), Melissa de la Cruz (Descendants series), Hafsah Faizal (We Hunt the Flame series), Marie Lu (The Kingdom of Back), and Marissa Meyer (The Lunar Chronicles series) at the Flights of Fantasy panel discussion.

“How can stories be used as a safe place?” moderator/podcaster (Adventures in YA) Sara Roberts asked the group, whose ethnic diversity – Indian American, Hispanic, Chinese, multi-racial, and Arab, as well as identifying as white – offered a springboard for discussion.

“(Fantasies are) safe places in that they do not minimize any emotion. That’s what I love about children’s literature,” Chokshi said.

image: Prawny from Pixabay

That’s because readers can explore “while immersing yourselves in a whole new world,” Cruz said. “A lot of fantasy is metaphor.”

Lu noted, “The journey of discovery of yourself always applies. (But) there were a lot of holes in fantasy that are now opening up and giving way to other voices.”

For Meyer, reading fantasy as a young person was escapist, a way to explore new worlds. “there’s so much explanation mirrored in these epic quests.”

Given the benefits of trying on these new worlds, “How important is it for young readers to see themselves” in books, Roberts asked.

As an Indian American, Chokshi said, even after she began writing as well as reading, “I took me a while to realize I was writing myself out of my stories. These stories read with a lot more urgency when you see yourself in them.”

“Maybe the beautiful queen can have dark hair instead of blonde,” Cruz said.

“My first efforts were very white,” Faizal said. “I wrote all white characters because I thought that’s what I had to do to get published. . . (Once) I realized what was wrong and got myself into the story, it took off.”

“Early on,” Lu also admitted, “I never ever thought of putting myself in these books. Growing up, I never saw a story with a Chinese character. I can’t imagine what it would have meant to me as a reader.”

Surveying her fellow writers, Meyer decided to address the elephant in the room. “So, I’m white,” she said, a statement that drew delighted laughter from her very diverse audience. “I came to this through anime and realized that even in anime, which is Japanese, a lot of the characters are white,” sparking the possibility of diverse characters in even the smallest details.

And although many stories emphasize the difficulties faced by characters (and readers and writers) of non-white ethnicities, “It’s really great to have stories about ourselves that are fun!” Chokshi said. 

***

Next up: Diversity goes to the movies, with body type and gender as well as ethnic variations, at the North Texas Teen Book Festival

Dallas Festival of Books & Ideas – books were not forgotten!

What was I expecting from the increasing entanglement of the annual Dallas Book Festival with the Dallas Festival of Ideas? Over several years, the two events have moved closer together – to the point of sharing both a date and location in the Central Branch of the Dallas Public Library – a pairing that made for claustrophobia as inspiration. Due to personal scheduling conflicts, I can only speak of the book portion of the festival.

This year’s pairing, the Dallas Festival of Books & Ideas, spread the “ideas” portion spread over five days, all in separate locations. For the most part, the “books” portion, retitled “Summer in the City,” was confined to the past Saturday at the library. The omission of the word “books” from the library’s listing of events was slightly disconcerting, but writing and reading themselves were not slighted, and the separation of festival locations greatly reduced congestion and the sometimes-dueling overlap of author readings and panels of past book festivals.

Dallas Central Library branch

 I missed the bravura, nationally acclaimed author presentations of a few years ago, but still appreciated the diversity of Texas authors and interest groups – from “must-reads” by African-American authors (presented by The Dock Bookshop of Fort Worth); to presentations from the Jane Austen Society of North Texas; Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators; and Dallas Area Romance Authors. 

There were major attractions – children’s writer Laura Numeroff (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie); award-winning fantasy/horror writer Joe R. Lansdale (The Elephant of Surprise); Steven Davis and Bill Minutaglio’s nonfiction narrative of Richard Nixon’s fixation on LSD guru Timothy Leary (The Most Dangerous Man in America); historical fiction writer Melanie Benjamin (Mistress of the Ritz); and author of women-oriented Westerns, Melissa Lenhardt, whose latest volume, Heresy, has been described as a “queer, transgender, multiracial takeover of the Old West.” 

I also appreciated an emphasis on younger audiences, and people who might be less literarily conscious, reflected in discussions of fanfiction, the writing of science fiction and fantasy for children and teen audiences as well as adults (presented by the DFW Writers Workshop), exposure of young readers to the Sherlock Holmes canon (presented by local Holmes society, The Crew of the Barque Lone Star), and writing family histories, followed by performances by local teen rap artists.

And of course, the opportunity to sign up for the Mayor’s Summer Reading Challenge, with perks and prizes for readers from 1-100. If you missed this one, never fear, I’ll post later with more details, including how even kids too young to read can win!

If in all this, anybody feared that the Dallas Book Festival had left purely literary works left in the dust, WordSpace presented local poets B. Randall and Opalina Salas, and translators for local press Deep Vellum discussed their latest, selected poems of Goethe.

How the combined, intertwined festivals of books and ideas will work in the future remains to be seen, but here’s hoping the broadened festival base will attract – and keep – sponsors and visitors alike.

(Still to come, snippets and deliciously outrageous comments from the presentations by authors Davis and Minutaglio, Lenhardt, and the Crew of the Barque Lone Star.) 

Wordcraft – They have a list or two, just for you!

The North TexasTeen Book Festival just keeps getting better! The later date this year – April instead of last year’s March – surprised me, but the schedule change meant the NTTBF had the entire Irving Convention Center to itself this past Saturday. And it needed it. The convention center was packed with more than 70 authors and nearly 8,000 attendees, more than double last year’s attendance.

Yes, it was hectic. Fortunately there were security personnel to direct the traffic that streamed up and down the escalators. Concession stands sported long lines at the concession stands (note: go before the end of each hour’s panels), and some of the panels having to turn attendees away for lack of room. After being confronted by long lines of school buses last year, I took DART, which stops near the convention center, to avoid the parking crush.

My take is: thousands of people, mostly teens, crazy about books, is worth some aggravation. But maybe next year the festival can expand over an entire weekend? (There was a separate session Friday for educators.) Monitors had to urge attendees to give author panels time to get to their next appointment, but how great is it to see kids mobbing authors as if they’re rock stars? To see them begging authors, book bloggers, and BookTube stars their own age for autographs and pictures?

The level of enthusiasm made the festival worth being nearly run over a few times. Hey, it was a festival, not a staid and stodgy conference.

My sights were set first on the Lone Star All-Stars panel. How have I gone so long without knowing about the amazing reading lists complied by the Texas Library Association? Two of the lists – Lone Star for grades 6-8 and TAYSHAS for grades 9-12 – were featured at the festival. These are designed to encourage students to explore a variety of current books. These are lists for recreational reading, not intended to support a specific curriculum, and each title has been favorably reviewed in professional review services.

In addition to the Lone Star and TAYSHAS lists, the Texas Library Association also has suggested reading lists for younger kids as well as adults. Click on "reading lists" here to see everything.

The NTTBF panel of Lone Star All-Stars included authors of current and previous list titles Karen Blumenthal  (Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different), Rachel Caine (Ink and Bones), Christina Diaz Gonzalez  (Moving Target), Gordon Korman (Ungifted), Marie Lu  (Legend series), and Teresa Toten  (The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B).

“What these lists (Lone Star and TAYSHAS) do is introduce readers to a lot of voices they might not have heard of,” said Blumenthal, a longtime Dallas resident.

Korman agreed. “Every state has a list like these. One of the great things about lists like that it provides a level of critical acclaim for books that don’t get the Newbery level of acclaim.”

Does not getting Newbery Medal from the American Library Association (which only honors one book each year) mean a book isn’t worthy of being read?

“Most of my books are funny,” Korman said wryly, “and you know the funny movie doesn’t win the Oscar.”

Kids apparently agreed on the worthiness of the books in question, avidly asking questions and descending on authors at the panel’s conclusion, a phenomenon repeated over and over during the festival.

I’ll post more about the NTTBF, especially the popularity of BookTube and how to set up your own book channel, later. In the meantime, don’t forget that this coming Saturday, April 30, sees a revising and expanded Dallas Book Festival  at the Central Branch of the Dallas Public Library, 1515 Young St., Dallas, from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

I’m looking forward to hearing author Joshua Hammer discuss his The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, among other, but one librarian personally recommended Adam Mansbach’s Go the F**k to Sleep for all parents who’s been at their wits end over their kids' sleeping habits. (Check out the YouTube readings by Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson and others.)

Wordcraft -- Young people to books: we love you!

I could hardly believe the sight was real. Dozens of school buses from districts across North Texas lined the road outside the Irving Convention Center, unloading kids who’d given up a beautiful Saturday to hang out with their favorite authors at the first annual North Texas Teen Book Festival.

And it wasn’t just hundreds of kids, but thousands of them. The final attendance count totaled 3,500, according to festival steering committee member Mandy Aguilar. Crowds of young people (and a scattering of adults, like me) filled two stories of the convention center to see and hear more than fifty authors. And to line up for questions, and buy books, and mob writers for one-on-one discussions and selfies beyond number.

As someone who worries over predictions that boys stop reading once they hit adolescence, it was reassuring to see almost as many boys as girls line up to question authors.

And since I’m always looking for the next new thing to satisfy my tweenaged grandsons’ appetite for books, I took copious notes at author panels designated for middle grade readers (generally, ages 8-12).

What would tempt boys who crave male heroes but who don’t turn up their noses at spunky females? Boys who are daringly geeky, the kids who spout hockey league statistics at the drop of a puck, but are undecided about whether to pursue careers in science or the arts?

Maybe they’d like The Great Greene Heist, by engineer turned author Varian Johnson, www.varianjohnson.com/? Johnson still pursues an engineering career,  but he’s spending ever-increasing amounts of time writing award-winning books for young people.

And then there was Plano author Polly Holyoke (http://pollyholyoke.com/) with The Neptune Project, about a group of genetically-altered, ocean-dwelling young people and their dolphin friends. Former middle school teacher Holyoke enjoyed researching The Neptune Project and its out-this-May sequel, The Neptune Challenge. The downside of research? Sharing so much scary stuff with her daughters they're now reluctant to go swimming or scuba diving with her.

I personally sympathized with author/panelist Shannon Messenger who started her career intending to major in art, discovered she hated it, switched film because she loved a screenwriting course but found she hated the Hollywood life, and finally realized she really wanted to write novels, like the Keeper of Lost Cities series starring a preteen telepath, and admits at
http://ramblingsofawannabescribe.blogspot.com/ to keeping company with insane numbers of animals.

By lunchtime, all the mental exertion left me starving. But with the line for the convention center’s café out the door (note for next year, bring sack lunch), I hit the book room stocked by HalfPrice Books. Oh, here was something that looked fun, a book from Obert Skye’s Creature from My Closet series, illustrated by drawings my grandsons would love. (See samplings at his website, www.abituneven.com/.)

The boys were flying off the next day for spring break. And although their dad had loaded movies on his iPad, they couldn’t resist taking a book along as well, an actual printed book. Which one was it? I’m waiting to see. And to hear all about it.

By the way, if you missed the festival, I’m sorry. But mark your calendar for the next one, March 5, 2016. Because like a good book series, the sequel is already in the works.